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How to Reply to Russian Propaganda

It’s time the U.S. drew from its Cold War lessons to fashion a response.

By

Jeffrey Gedmin

Dec. 3, 2014 3:28 p.m. ET

At the recent summit of G-20 leaders in Australia, German Chancellor Angela Merkel met privately with Vladimir Putin to push the Russian leader on Ukraine. Mr. Putin wouldn’t budge. He “radiated coldness,” one German official said. Two days later, however, Mr. Putin struck a conciliatory tone in an interview with German public television. He told the ARD network there were ways out of the crisis. Moscow’s only concern was the supposed ethnic cleansing of innocent Russians by neo-Nazis in Eastern Ukraine.